Russka (153 page)

And Ludmilla looked at Varya. For this was Varya’s second strange idea.

When had it first begun? Ludmilla had only been working there six months, so she did not know. But somehow the bar had finished one day with too much bread. Anyone else would have taken the bread, or thrown it away the next day. But for some reason known only to herself, Varya had insisted on serving the old bread the following day, until it was all used up – which, as it happened, was not until closing time. The fresh bread delivered that morning, therefore, had still remained untouched in the kitchen behind the bar. The following day she repeated the process. The previous day’s bread was served; the fresh, delivered sliced, was left in the kitchen. And within a short time this curious procedure had set into a pattern which had developed rules of its own.

No one was allowed to touch the bread. If you did, Varya would know. Nor could anyone tell the people downstairs not to deliver one day, to clear the backlog. ‘Then they’d start asking questions.’ Nor, even, could you use any of the fresh bread if you ran out of the stale bread during the day. ‘We use so much a day, no more, no less,’ she said firmly. So it was, in the fifth-floor bar, that the bread served was always exactly one day old.

Paul only stayed another two minutes. Then, with a nod to Ludmilla, he hurried off. It never occurred to either of them that they were related.

It was an easy journey down. The huge, broad street leading out of Moscow soon gave way to modest two-carriage highways; within an hour the two had merged into a single road, broad enough for two cars to drive abreast each side, but with no markings upon it of any kind. ‘We don’t have your freeways,’ Sergei remarked apologetically.

‘You don’t need them,’ Paul replied. And indeed, for a main road, the traffic was remarkably light.

Like most Russians, Sergei drove his little car at breakneck speed, feeling free to use almost any part of the road as the mood took him. Once or twice, rather unexpectedly, the road surface of even this highway would abruptly disintegrate, and one would be
travelling, still at the same speed, over a surface of caked mud or chips for half a mile or so until the metalled surface resumed again.

The weather was excellent. The sky was a clear, pale blue, cloudless, and with only a faint, dusty haze along the eastern horizon. The birch trees lay to each side of the road, their silver trunks and brilliant emerald leaves producing a sparkling effect.

Sergei Romanov had a round face, balding head and fair hair. He had been twice to the west and hoped to go again. Like many Russians of his age – and Paul put him in his late thirties – Sergei was cautious about talking about himself, but extremely curious to know more about Bobrov. At first, however, as Paul had sometimes found with other Soviets of the intellectual kind, there was a slight shyness in this. When he referred to old Nicolai Bobrov, for instance, he said: ‘Your great-grandfather, the late esteemed member of the last Duma,’ which playful tone masked, Paul realized, a certain sense of respect towards his family’s past.

Bobrov chatted easily with him now, therefore, speaking of his family, his Russian upbringing, the nursery rhymes and folk tales he had learned as a child; and by the time they had been driving an hour, Sergei was entirely relaxed.

‘Of course, we can’t help being curious about you,’ he said frankly to Paul, ‘because when Russia lost all the people like you, we lost the better part of our old culture, and now we hardly know how to get it back.’

‘It depends what you want, I should think,’ Paul replied. ‘What do you want?’ he asked.

Sergei was thoughtful for some time. ‘You operated under capitalism before the revolution, didn’t you? Free markets?’

‘Yes. Pretty much.’

‘And free expression? Literature? Philosophy?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Do you know, philosophy in Russian schools consists of Hegel, Feuerbach and Marx? Plato, Socrates, Descartes, Kant – these are scarcely mentioned.’ He shook his head. ‘We want our history above all,’ he continued. ‘Stalin rewrote so much we don’t have any idea what the truth is. Can you imagine what that feels like? To realize you have no idea what really happened, what made you the person you are? We feel like a lost generation. And we want it all back.’ Suddenly, and with an unexpected passion that sent the car
careering to the centre of the road and back, he banged on the steering wheel. ‘All of it!’

‘How about the Church?’

‘I’m an atheist,’ Sergei said firmly. ‘I can’t believe. But if others wish to, they should be free to do so.’ Then he smiled. ‘My mother believed. She used to go to secret services in people’s houses. Did you know about that?’

Paul had heard of this secret religious activity. No one knew exactly how it was organized. It was known as the Catacomb Church, after the secret, underground worshipping of early Christian times; but he was aware that ever since the early days of the Soviet state, there had been a large network of priests, often moving from one region to another, who held secret services for the faithful in cabins, barns, or hideouts in the woods all over Russia.

‘Perhaps if Russian culture returns, you may become a religious believer too,’ he said with a smile.

‘I doubt it.’

They drove some way towards the city of Vladimir before turning south. Several times Sergei seemed to get lost, but managed eventually to find the narrow road that apparently led towards Russka.

Having relieved his feelings about his culture, Sergei seemed anxious to talk of other matters. He spoke of things he had seen in the West, and asked Bobrov about his business. ‘You market computers, don’t you? Tell me exactly how it works.’

This was not easy, but Paul did his best. He outlined the whole marketing plan for a new product from market research, all the way through to the advertising, and the sales-kits. ‘Then,’ he said with a grin, ‘I have to sell it to the salesmen.’ It was the same pattern, pretty much, he explained, for any product. And all the time, Sergei Romanov nodded and said: ‘Ah yes, this is what we should have.’

It was late morning when they reached the little town of Russka.

It was a terrible disappointment.

Thanks to his grandmother’s information, it was now Paul Bobrov who conducted Romanov around. The town was rather run down. The great watchtower, with its high tent roof, still stood. So did most of the houses in the town, though he noticed
that the larger, merchant houses by the little park had been split into apartments and their gardens left to grow high with bushes and brambles. The stone church by the marketplace, however, was in a sorry state and had clearly not been used in decades.

He found that one of the factories there was making bicycles; but the textile business still existed, in that the other was making woollen blankets. Having made a tour of the sad little town, he led Sergei down to the river and walked him along the path to the springs. They, at least, had not altered, and the two men sat for some time on the green mossy bank and listened to the sounds of the water splashing down.

By now, however, Paul was impatient to see the old Bobrov house; and as soon as they had walked back from the springs, they got into the car and drove across the bridge and along the bumpy path through the wood.

The village was much as Nadezhda had described it. There were no Romanovs there now, and Sergei had no idea which house had been his family’s; but once again, remembering all Nadezhda had said, Paul was able to take him to the handsome two-storey house with the carved gables, and tell him: ‘This is where Boris Romanov used to live.’

There was only one thing that puzzled him: as they went round he kept looking up the slope towards where, he was sure, the old Bobrov house should be. But he could not see it. Finally he asked a villager: ‘Where’s the big house?’ And the fellow explained: ‘They say there was one up the hill there. But I never saw it.’

And so it proved to be. When they walked up the slope, they found nothing. Not a frame; not an outbuilding; nothing but a faint outline on the turf and, a little above it, an overgrown alley through the trees.

The ancestral house had gone. His link with the past was lost, buried in the ground. His journey had been in vain. Sadly, he turned to go back.

It was when they approached the monastery that they discovered something was going on.

From outside, it looked almost deserted. The walls were crumbling; the bell tower was down. The buildings within seemed to be windowless.

Yet now, suddenly, appeared two monks.

They were young, both in their twenties, simply dressed in black cassocks. One was tall and thin, with a small fair beard; the other with a broad, intelligent face, and bright blue eyes set wide apart that looked out with an extraordinary freshness upon the world. They smiled as the car approached. Sergei halted and rolled down the window.

‘There are monks here?’ The great Danitov Monastery had been sending out monks to several places, but he had no idea they had come down to Russka.

‘For three months,’ the tall monk smiled. ‘You are baptised?’

‘Most certainly.’ It was Paul Bobrov who answered from the passenger seat.

‘God has sent you at a propitious time,’ the monk with the blue eyes said. ‘Come and see.’ And the two monks turned and led the car in.

It was an unexpected sight. A dozen monks were standing near the chapel. Though, like the other buildings there, it had lost its windows long ago, huge sheets of transparent plastic had been placed to cover them. Several of the smaller buildings, Paul could see, had been partly remodelled and made habitable. Someone had started work on the inside of the gateway.

He also noticed that, for some reason, about forty peasants, mostly women but a number of men, were standing respectfully to one side; and that just by the church entrance, was lying a casket covered with a purple cloth.

They got out and stood awkwardly.

‘I’m afraid we are intruding,’ Paul said. But the two young monks would have none of it and rushed away, returning a minute later with a man of about fifty with an intelligent, enquiring face, who made them a gracious bow of welcome and explained: ‘I am the Archimandrite Leonid. May I ask how you happened to be here just now?’

When Paul told him why he had come, the Archimandrite seemed almost shaken. ‘You are a Bobrov? Of the family that founded this monastery? And your name is Paul? We are, as you know, the Monastery of St Peter and St Paul.’ He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘These things,’ he said quietly, ‘are sent to us as signs. They do not come by chance.’ And then, smiling at them both, he said, ‘Please stay for a little while. It appears that your coming was meant.’

It was indeed an extraordinary coincidence, Paul considered, however you looked at it. He, a Bobrov, had arrived at the little monastery, just being reopened – and not just upon any day. For the very day before, the monks, diligently searching, had found the grave of one of their most revered elders, and that day, at the very hour when Paul arrived, were taking his remains into the church for a service of rededication. It was the Elder Basil, who had lived as a hermit many years in the previous century, out past the springs, in the company of a bear.

The service was not unduly long and was very simple.

The casket containing the remains of the Elder Basil had been placed at the north-east corner of the church. The interior of the building was a strange sight. Apart from the sheets of plastic over the windows, only half the space was, as yet, safe for use and a big triangle of cloth had been draped across a string to mark this area off. Behind it stood a step-ladder and several buckets, apparently to catch rainwater from the roof.

Though the Archimandrite had put on vestments, all the other monks were simply dressed in black, some of them showing signs of plaster dust. The people who crowded in were mostly poor-looking. There was nothing of ornament, no grandeur, nothing to delight the eye in that simple Orthodox service.

They sang a psalm and a hymn.

The sermon of the Archimandrite Leonid was, similarly, very simple and delivered with expressions of extraordinary gentleness.

They must all be grateful, he reminded them, for signs of God’s Providence, which signs by their very nature are wholly unforeseen. They remind us, he pointed out, that the Wisdom of God is great indeed and that, though we may glimpse it, we may not know more than an infinitesimal part of His great purpose. How else was it, he suggested, that at such an hour, on such a day, one Paul, descendant of the founder of this monastery, should appear by chance at the monastery gates, having travelled for thousands of miles? And was it not significant, he remarked, that having come in search of his earthly house, and found it gone, he should now have come all unaware to this, his spiritual house?

He turned then to the former life of the monastery – the centuries of its existence – and to the fact that now that life, after a short death, was resuming again.

But it was his words on the Elder Basil himself which Paul would always remember.

‘For many years, the Elder Basil dwelt in his Hermitage, praying and giving spiritual guidance; to him also are ascribed a number of miracles. But today, as we have his blessed remains before us, it is to the very start of his life as a hermit that I wish to turn.

‘It was always said that the Elder Basil had a gift with animals. It was remarked that a large bear would often appear, and that he would find this bear and talk to it like a kindly father to a child; and people therefore decided he had a gift.

‘In fact the opposite was the case. The Elder, at the start of his seclusion, was very much afraid when the bear appeared. So much so that, the first time, he cowered in his little hut all night and almost returned to the monastery the next day. The second night, the same thing happened.

‘Only on the third night did the Elder Basil understand what he must do.

‘For on the third night, Basil remained outside his hut, seated quietly on the ground. And he said the Jesus prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.” Not because he asked any longer that his body be saved; but rather that, he considered – “What can this bear do to me, who by God’s Grace have eternal life?”